Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Author: Cobus van Staden
China Should Not Compromise With Western Creditors in Zambian Debt Relief, Says Prominent Scholar
Zambia’s debt renegotiation is being delayed by barriers within China’s banking system and by Western pressure. So says Professor Tang Xiaoyang, a prominent expert on Chinese overseas development finance and the director of the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University, in an interesting interview with the ...
New Report: China Is Now the Major Lender of Last Resort for Developing Countries
China has spent $240 billion in rescue payments to 22 economically distressed Belt and Road economies between 2008 and 2021. A new report published by AidData, the research center at the College of William and Mary, and co-authored with researchers at the ...
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster. What one makes of the ...
China Tries to Maintain Mideast Diplomatic Momentum With Summit Planned for Later This Year
China will host a summit between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council later this year, reports the Wall Street Journal. The summit with the six-country bloc (made up of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait) will further solidify the normalization of diplomatic ...
State Department Spox: U.S. Not Being Supplanted by China in Mideast as “Some Allege”
The U.S. State Department dismissed suggestions that China’s brokering of a diplomatic thaw between Iran and Saudi Arabia reflects a diminishment of the United States’s influence in the Middle East. Spokesperson Ned Price told reporters that: “In any way you look at it, America is deeply engaged with the ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
Israel Not Happy About the China-Brokered Iran-Saudi Arabia Deal
Few countries are as directly affected by the Saudi-Iran deal as Israel. The announcement seemed to have caught the Netanyahu government off guard and occasioned intense discussion, with incumbent and opposition politicians blaming each other for appearing “weak” and lessening Israel’s clout in the region. ...
Unpacking Israeli Reactions to Iran-Saudi Deal
As Israel’s famously feisty commentariat lays into the China-brokered Iran-Saudi thaw, the country’s reactions will likely have broader impacts. Israel’s own role in the region’s security landscape is at play, but its close relationship with the United States will also influence how Washington deals with the broader ...
India To Discourage Foreign Trade Settlement in Chinese Yuan – Sources
India has asked banks and traders to avoid using Chinese yuan to pay for Russian imports, three government officials involved in policy making and two banking sources said, because of long-running political differences with its neighbor. India, which has emerged as ...
Chinese Blockbuster Wandering Earth II Extends Africa Release With Premiere in Egypt
The Chinese sci-fi spectacle, The Wandering Earth II, is slowly turning into a global blockbuster. The film debuted to enthusiastic audiences in Egypt after getting similarly positive responses in other African countries, including South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique.
Rays of Hope Following China Settlement in Sri Lanka
China’s commitment to supporting Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring in line with other bilateral creditors is a major step towards securing a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund. However, it’s still unclear how negotiations will proceed, as the country suffers from food and ...